Organize To Reverse a Bad Day
Summer Tears by Mark Seton (Creative Commons License)
In a perfect world, our time and task management wouldn’t depend upon our moods. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.
In theory, our organizational systems should be designed so that we can accomplish our goals whether we’re feeling motivated or not. That’s the whole point of a system, to give us a framework when something external or internal prevents us from feeling our usual drive to achieve.
Last September, in Rhymes With Brain: Languishing, Flow, and Building a Better Routine, I wrote:
We also depend on activation energy. Because the hardest part of what we do is the getting started, we have to incentivize ourselves to get going. There are all sorts of ways we can trick ourselves (a little bit) with rewards, like pretty desk accessories or a coffee break, but the problem is that action precedes motivation. We’re not usually psyched to get going until we have already started!
Action precedes motivation. We're not usually psyched to get going until we have already started, whether it's a runner's high or Csikszentmihalyi's flow. Share on XWe may not feel like working out, but once we’re dressed in our best approximation of Venus and Serena, or the yogi of the moment, or whichever quarterback is getting all the endorsements, and have gotten ourselves warmed up, we’re well on our way.
When we lack our usual oomph, our knowledge of the benefits of staying organized may not be enough to keep us motivated to track our expenses, pay our bills on time, file our papers, and stick with our routines, but if we nudge ourselves with giving it just a little try (“just five minutes” or a Pomodoro of 25 minutes or whatever), we may find ourselves able to get into flow.
In other words, well begun is half done.
In that post on languishing, I talked about how to get past the (likely pandemic-induced) blahs and generate flow. We looked at several rhymes-with-brain solutions:
- Abstain from the distractions that steal your focus.
- Retrain your brain by shaking up the synapses and making different connections.
- Restrain yourself from frequenting the people who eating up your time and energy.
- Constrain your work areas and minimize the space they take up to keep from spending all your energy looking for your supplies and resources instead of using them to achieve your goals.
- Contain those items in the areas you’ve constrained (above).
- Maintain your successful routines.
- Attain (and explain) knowledge to keep your brain active.
- Gain momentum and jump-start your enthusiasm.
If you haven’t read that post, skedaddle over to it first, as conquering languishing might be just what you need.
BEYOND LANGUISHING
The problem with productivity is that sometimes, we’ll be going along just fine and hit a brick wall. If languishing is the “blah,” a really bad day is the “waaaaaaaaah.”
Judith Viorst captured it best in the title Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Whether you remember it from childhood, babysitting days, or from parenthood, you know what she means. There are days that can go wrong and completely wreck our moods and take our whole day off course.
Maybe it starts small: you accidentally pour the orange juice into your
Perhaps you have a fight with a loved one or the person with whom you get along the least well (that’s a nice way of saying it, right?) gets a promotion or media attention or some other kind of success.
Or maybe something truly terrible (but still in the realm of “bad day”) happens, like a fender bender or news of impending layoffs at work.
When a few small bad things happen in sequence, no matter how strong your intention, the collective experience tends to upend your schedule, foul your mood, and destroy your day. If you let nature take its course, you may feel better after a delicious grilled cheese sandwich or a tearful phone call to your bestie, or your bad morning may turn into a bad day that scrolls into a bad week.
So, let’s not let nature take its course. Let’s stop that bad day in its tracks.
ORGANIZE YOUR WAY OUT OF A BAD DAY
Organizing your space, time, and thoughts can be powerful. It can even prevent catastrophes. But other times, the best it can do is make catastrophes less catastrophic. At those moments, we must accept what has happened, or what is happening, and turn inward to control our response.
Insert a Break
Anyone who has ever used a word processing program knows the command to Insert Page Break makes sure that there’s ample white space between one set of content and another. You insert a page break between chapters in a book, or between sections in a report. It keeps unrelated material from flowing together.
In your time management, when you’re having a bad day, take a pause to keep your bad morning from flowing into a bad afternoon.
Let’s say something annoying happens at 9:45 a.m. Depending on how resilient we’re feeling, we may get a fat-laden snack from the vending machine or take a walk to get some fresh air, and then regroup. If that little break is enough to reverse course on your bad day, count it as a win!
Embrace Time Blocking
But if you’re feeling resentment from multiple recent annoying things bubbling up inside of you, you may be at risk of bringing the whole day down. Here’s where your break needs to be a little more focused. This is where we can steal from the concept of time blocking.
We’ve explored time blocking often, most recently in Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity. At its most basic, time blocking focuses on creating chunks of time for particular activities.
The whole notion is that an endless to-do list never sets aside fixed time for the categories of activities we claim to value. If we are constantly putting out fires and dealing with interruptions, the most important tasks never get done. With time blocking in the way we normally approach it, there are some basic tasks:
Start with a brain dump of everything you need to accomplish.
Group all your tasks into categories. At the time, I said, Work categories may not be all that different from school categories. You had math (now it’s bookkeeping or bill-paying) or English (now correspondence, marketing projects, or reading for fun). All of those activities were regulated by a fixed schedule that ensured you had ample time to focus on each subject. A bell triggered transition time. Your schedule even accounted for lunch and phys. ed. to keep your brain and body healthy.
Schedule your blocks so that you guarantee yourself set time for dealing with each important category.
I also said to “bubble-wrap” your time blocks with buffer time, so instead of trying to having Zoom meetings and major projects back-to-back, you’ll have recovery time.
Sometimes, life circumstances require you to replace a planned day with different activities. But by grouping categories of tasks into blocks, it’s easier to slide the tasks around and move them to where they’ll fit.
And this is where time blocking comes into play on a bad day. When teaching clients how to time block, I usually suggest they make use of 90-minute blocks. Just focusing on the workday, and not taking into account your early mornings and what you’re trying to deal with from dinner to bedtime, it’s easy to see we have not one big blob of a day, but multiple blocks:
- Early Morning
- Late Morning
- Early Afternoon
- Mid-Afternoon
- Late Afternoon
Let’s say you have a run-in with a co-worker or get bad news from your boss in the early morning. Or you have a fight with your spouse or a frustration with a parent in the drop-off line at school. Or, someone is wrong on the internet!
©XKCD/Randall Munroe (Creative Commons License)
It is so freakin’ easy to let an ugly mood settle into your day like a bad cough in your chest. If inserting that page break into the story of your day did work, your next option is to tell yourself that the day isn’t lost.
Take a deep breath. If you’re actually time-blocking, look at the the blocks you have on your calendar and figure out what’s the next possible block you can slide to a different day so that you can use your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit (see below) to get out of your funk.
If your day is not so carefully blocked out, mentally flip through your obligations for the next several hours until a good dividing line appears. If it’s 11:30 a.m., declare bankruptcy on your late morning block, know that lunch is a built-in daily mental health repair kit, and try to move or cancel whatever is in that first block in the afternoon.
The point isn’t to run away and join the circus, but to give yourself ample time to treat the yucky experience as a bad chunk, rather than an entire bad day. Then apply chocolate, or a soothing phone call, or an unplanned yoga class, or whatever, to the bruise forming from your crash with whatever ruined your mood. Instead:
- Acknowledge that something unpleasant happened.
- Give yourself permission not to deal with all of your emotions regarding the experience right now.
- Take responsibility for clearing the decks for the next block (or two) so you can recuperate.
- Use your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit.
- Find your path to resilience.
Create a Bad Day Rescue Toolkit
More than a decade ago, Daniel Powter had a hit with the song Bad Day. (YouTube won’t let me insert it, but it’s worth it for you to go listen to it and watch the wonderful video.) My favorite part of the lyrics is when, after cataloguing the various travails, Powter sings, “You need a blue sky holiday.”
Every person’s Bad Day Rescue Toolkit will include different items, but use these ideas as a guidepost. The key is to organize as much of this now, when you’re having a fine or neutral day, so you’ll have it when you need it.
- Make a list of the phone numbers of your most upbeat and/or most supportive friends.
Note: these may not be the same people. Scroll through your phone and think about who you might call if you need to vent or need to be perked up. My BFF is my go-to when I need to vent, and I try to be that for her. I’m not as good at refraining from trying to fix the situation as she is. (If you just want to vent, tell the person that before you get started.)
But here’s a sneaky tip. Try to tell the whole story of whatever frustrated you only once, to just one person. Get it out — all the “grrrrr, arghh” — and then move on to the rest of the experience. If it’s the right time to start looking for support with solutions, do that. Otherwise, invite your callee to distract you. Let them tell you about an awful situation at work, something ridiculous their mother-in-law said, or what’s making them bananas these days. (Try to avoid politics. That’s giving us all bad days.)
- Keep a browser-bar folder on your computer or phone for websites that distract and amuse you — better yet, sync them for easy access. On Mac/iOS, back them up to iCloud. And here’s an article for How to Sync Browsers Between Your Phone and PC.
Similarly, start maintaining a folder (digital or paper) of jokes, funny stories, cartoons, or goofy memes. If you’re on Twitter, use the bookmark tool to save those long, ridiculous threads where people report silly family stories or embarrassing tales.
Airport cashier: “Have a safe flight.” Me: “You too!” I CAN NEVER COME HERE AGAIN.
— Jenny Lawson (@TheBloggess) November 1, 2015
This classic is one of my all-time favorite threads, and by the time I get days into the contributions, I usually end up looking like the laughing-crying emoji.
For professional humor, I particularly like comics that are gentle. My favorites are:
Liz Climo’s The Little World of Liz books and Twitter feed
Dinosaur Comics and Twitter feed
Nathan W Pyle’s Strange Planet comics, books, and Twitter feed
recently I started drawing a series called ✨Strange Planet✨
here is a thread of these comicshttps://t.co/WcqCOljAIJ pic.twitter.com/uuYnqeuCc8
— Nathan W. Pyle (@nathanwpyle) February 21, 2019
- Start saving videos that make you happy.
It’s shockingly easy. Make sure you’re logged into Google (because Google owns YouTube) and then whenever you come across a video that makes you laugh or lifts your spirits, click on the SAVE button to the lower right of the video.
This is how you create a playlist. When the little window pops up, click “Create New Playlist” and give your playlist a name, like Make Me Happy! You can also decide whether this playlist is public or private.
- Consider making YouTube playlists of other kinds of videos, like travelogues or workout routines — anything that focuses on what take you out of your head long enough to regroup.
Sometimes, you don’t even need to do the workouts (though it helps). Consider watching The Kilted Coaches. (Your mileage may vary.)
- Create a playlist of songs that reverse crankiness.
Having grown up in the era of mix-tapes, I found the late-90s/early-00’s experience of trying to make CD mixes frustrating.
Nowadays, most folks are going to make playlists directly in Spotify, so whether you want to do it on the desktop or via mobile, here are Spotify’s directions for creating playlists. (And, of course, if you prefer to watch videos along with listening to your music, you can search out your favorite songs on YouTube and follow my directions above.)
If you’re not that up on popular music, you can also search online for happiness-including playlists that other people have created. For example, The Ultimate Happy Playlist on Spotify runs almost two-and-a-half joy-inspiring hours and has more than 10,000 followers. From Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine to Pharrell Williams’ Happy to many less obvious choices, it’s a good starter for dissipating a bad mood.
- Build up your success folders.
As we’ve discussed before, having tangible folders for papers and digital folders (generally for email) allow you to keep proof of your successes to read when you’re feeling down on yourself.
In my prior career, I had one particular manager who bore a striking resemblance to Dilbert’s evil, pointy-haired boss — I’m not sure what exactly went on during his long lunches, but depending on his mood, he’d either hunker down in his office or roam around to a pick a fight. He was once heard to scream at a hapless employee, “Everyone hates you because you use too much copy paper!”
That was the point when I first recognized how valuable and life-affirming it can be to keep written copies of positive comments.
You might have an email from a client saying that they couldn’t have accomplished their goals without you, or a handwritten thank you note that shows appreciation for something you’ve done for a friend. Or you might just get a note that says, “You’re the best!” or “You really made me laugh.”
The point is that we never know when an evil, pointy-haired boss, or a bad boyfriend, or a good person having a bad day is going to do or say something to puncture our self-confidence. You can’t organize your way out of being disappointed in a representative of the human race, but gathering up the equivalent of a positive affirmation in the form of someone else’s handwriting (or over their email signature block) can really help reverse a bad day.
Other options to develop for your Bad Day Rescue Toolkit might include:
- a happy list — Whether you keep a note on your phone or have a sprawling list at the back of your journal, keep a running list of things that please you. My own list is a heady mix of things my friend’s four-year-old has said (most recently, with a big sigh, “HOW am I ever going to find a wife?), experiences I love (like waking up, seeing I have hours before the alarm will go off, and going back to sleep), funny lines from beloved TV shows like The West Wing and Ted Lasso, and a sub-list of just completely unexpected experiences that always remind me that you never know what might happen next!
- a workout plan with moves that boost your endorphins, or a bookmarked schedule of live exercise classes (in-person or remote) for when you need some human interaction along with your running/biking/downward-dogging.
- a set of mantras to get you going again (whether it’s a serious one, like “I am not defined by one mistake” or one that makes you laugh, with expletives not deleted)
- a meditation app — Good Housekeeping has put together a list of the 15 Best Meditation Apps of 2022. Calm and Headspace get all the media buzz, there are lots of good alternatives, including quite a few that are free.
- essential oils — OK, to be fair, I really don’t know anything about essential oils. Mostly, I know that my favorite scent is a grilled cheese sandwich, but many people swear by essential oils, either in the bath or through a diffuser. And I hear lavender oil can release tension. (If you’ve tried this option, let us know in the comments.)
When It’s More Than a Bad Day
Obviously, all of these suggestions are for resources that will help you tackle a garden-variety bad mood or bad day. If you find you’re having more back-to-back bad days or weeks than simple organizing can handle, please give yourself the gift of qualified professional support.
Call your health insurance Member Services number or check their website for mental health providers in your network. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, please know that you can call NAMI (the National Alliance of Mental Illness) hotline at 800-950-NAMI or text “NAMI” to 741741, or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255)
A Parting (Musical) Note
I hope you’re having a good day right now and that this post has helped you prepare for the future, in case you need to turn a bad day around. Please share your own ideas for organizing your way out of a bad day in the comments section below.
Finally, even though YouTube won’t let me share the moving, official video for Bad Day, so many people have told me through the years that it lifts their spirits, I wanted you to have a quick option to listen. I’m not sure I know the neurological or psychological mechanism, but sometimes, a sad song helps turn a bad day around.
Paper Doll Post:
Having a Time blocking schedule is a beautiful way to move around your time to make room for other situations that need priority. Last week, I had a laptop issue and had to move my client’s work into the evening to get back on track. We do what we have to do to get it done.
That laptop issue could have made for a “bad day” but you found your way to use time blocking to get out of that head space. Good for you!
I love this post. I have found that with pandemic brain my time blocks have to be much, much shorter—like 20-30 minutes. However, that is helpful with those buffer periods you mention. I can work for 30 minutes, and take a 10-20 minute break and still feel like I’m on track. Thanks for pointing this one out. It’s a good one!
Before the pandemic, I didn’t think much about how time management skills could boot us out of languishing mode OR bad days, but the longer we’re in it, the more I’m analyzing what we can do (if we ever get back to living like the “before times”) to get ourselves into the zone. Insert those page breaks in the story of your life!
You forgot to add to bookmark YOUR POST to the list of feel good, get you out of a bad mood day places to access. I’m having a great day, but now it’s even better. You made me laugh out loud several times here including the “Kilted Coaches” video and your favorite aromatherapy scent…”grilled cheese!”
Seriously, though, what a great piece about taking ownership when our moods go sideways. It happens to everyone. The day is going along just fine and then, wham. You get slam dunked with something- external or internal. And you’re off to the races in not a good way.
I love all of your strategies for moving forward and lifting your spirits. A few that help me are taking some intentional breaths. I mean we breathe all of the time, but stopping to do specific breathing exercises can switch us from the fight or flight mode into the rest and digest mode in a matter of minutes. Another thing is to stop and tune into your senses- what are you hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting. Again, heightening your sensory awareness can change your mood state to something calmer and possibly happier.
I’m also a big fan of a “Feel Good” file. You suggested ways for having a digital portfolio, which is great. I’ve also had clients set up actual paper (hanging file) ones too.
Love your idea of a “Bad Day Rescue Toolbox.” Why not? And how fun it will be to set up.
LOL. I know you’re kidding, but I’m tempted to go back in and edited the post to say BOOKMARK THIS PAGE! 😉
I recognize that we are all unique. My Kilted Coaches and grilled cheese may be someone else’s Vivaldi and raspberries. The key is to have a toolbox of solutions ready and waiting, just like you have a First Aid kit in case of booboos!
And I’m not surprised that your Bad Day Rescue Toolbox includes mindfulness and intentionality skills and routines like breathing and paying attention to your senses. I’d expect nothing less from my most “in-touch” friend.
Julie, I love all your suggestions. I have had a series of disappointing occurrences. I focus on asking myself what’s the next thing I have control of that I CAN do right now. This helps me get past whatever it was. AND I have 2 very cute dogs who give me unconditional love and attention – particularly when I feed them.
Also, I am a fan of the song BAD DAY and of Judith Viorst’s book: Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.
Thank you for this post!
I love your comment, Diane. It’s the perfect counterpoint to Linda’s, right above you. Whereas her toolkit has a lot of internal focus, your accents external things, like what you can DO, including feeding and getting love from your doggies!
I hope you’re having a “blue sky holiday” kind of Monday!
Honestly, next time I’m having a bad day I’m going to revisit all of the “funnies” you have shared in this post 🙂 I think my aromatherapy would include cinnamon. So good!
Deep breathing has been a saving grace for me on a bad day. I physically stop what I’m doing and take some long inhales and exhales, preferably of fresh air if it isn’t 11 degrees outside.
I also find that getting a fountain soda (yes, I still drink diet soda) can be a treat for me. When I get it straight from the fountain it is always bubblier, and this can lift my mood.
I’ve also been known to take your suggestion and seek out some intentional funnies online. Probably not in the middle of the day, but at the end, so I don’t spend the evening stewing over everything that went wrong.
My last coping technique is to temporarily set aside how I feel about the “bad thing,” with a plan to deal with it later. This is particularly helpful on those days when I need to push through. Sometimes this temporary compartmentalizing gives me enough time to gain some perspective.
I love how you normalize bad days here. Even when we plan well, have good ideas, do our research, leave extra time, etc., these yucky days still happen. I’m always so thankful for the brilliance of my need to sleep, which then allows me to wake to a new day.
Mmmmm, now I want cinnamon toast, Seana. That’s a scent that rivals grilled cheese for calming me right down!
And the reason I suggest gentle funnies is that they seem to shut off the snarky part of my brain and put me in a more innocent, optimistic mode.
I’m terrible at breathing. I try the military’s box breathing (inhale for four, hold for four, yaddda yadda) but I’m not good at holding or exhaling like that.
I hope you have a wonderful night of sleep tonight and no bad days in your future!
LOVED This..loved your bad day tool kits and I am such a HUGE fan of time blocking!
Thanks for reading, Lisa, and I hope you have lots of great days!
I like your thought. I going to my co-working space today and am going to use the 90-minute blocking for work. The last time I was there I sat still all day and I was so sore at the end. I didn’t get up because I was focused but wonder if I’d do even better if I took regular breaks.
Well, the idea of time blocking doesn’t preclude taking breaks within the work block. Think about how a Pomodoro is 25 minutes, followed by a break. You can get three Pomodoros into a 30 minute slot (though, in theory, the breaks should be a little longer after the second Pomodoro, it should all be enough to wiggle your tushy after sitting in an uncomfy seat). Experiment and let us know how it goes!
“The point isn’t to run away and join the circus, but to give yourself ample time to treat the yucky experience as a bad chunk, rather than an entire bad day.”
Yes, to this! I love the reminder I can start over at any point. I don’t have to write the whole day off because this bit of it threw me.
I eat five small meals a day, for health reasons, and they’re great ways to divide the day up into fresh starts. I can reset at the next meal time if I haven’t been able to shake what’s bothering me yet.
Absolutely, Lucy. So often, it feels like, “OK, this day is a lost cause.” But we don’t have to climb under the covers and wait until the next day. We have all sorts of ways to insert that page break in our narrative! Your meal break is a perfect example.
Action precedes motivation. THIS thing, yes! As I have done the past several years, I am painting every day in January. I hope to actually continue this time, the rest of the year. We shall see! But for sure, most days I don’t “feel” like it, I just do it. And once I start doing it, I LIKE it. Ugh it’s frustrating lol.
omg the Kilted Coaches are hilarious!
And so I offer you this pumpkin spice latte discussion, between guinea pigs:
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts, Cindy. I’m glad you found some things (um, hunky coaches) here that might help on a bad day.
And OMG, those Fluff guinea pigs are a hoot! I kept “forgetting” they weren’t odd little men! Thank you for sharing!